Ugandan Idol

October 30, 2007

In a just world, Sean Fine and Andrea Nix’s documentary wouldn’t exist— at least not in this fashion. The rebel group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army would not have been free to ravage northern Uganda, butchering parents, raping and killing children, and displacing entire towns of civilians; failing that, at the very least there would be no alarm needed to alert the rest of the world to the atrocities—among them the conversion of kidnapped children into forced killers. But in the existing marketplace, entertainment, not social consciousness, is the currency—hence this wake-up call couched in a strenuously upbeat inspirational sports doc.

The sport is Uganda’s national music and dance competition; the underdog heroes are Dominic, Rose, and Nancy, three orphaned teens in the Patongo refugee camp, whose school troupe is the first to represent rough-and-tumble northern Uganda against the more cosmopolitan south. They tell their horrific stories of mutilation and murder directly to the camera, while the reliance on picturesque backdrops, high-energy performances, and countdown-to-the-big-show narrative gambits begs you not to watch something easier on the conscience. The movie comes across as desperately, even irritatingly contrived, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say it overcame my naturally complacent instincts—which would be to watch something (anything) else, to not get haunted by that closing litany of websites for global action.

"More than any other contemporary African-American athlete, his ability to thrive in the pressure cooker of corporate America, while never making any embarrass­ing 'I’m not black, I’m universal' comments or selling his soul rather than just his visage, makes him a role model"

“Though his work for human rights is unassailable, the books grow worse and worse, the tales of his derring-do more and more farfetched. Finally, without at all forgiving him his lies, one feels sorry for Kosinski.”